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[bigkrev]

Coverage this weekend is annoying me. They are back on the "Robots" kick, after giving up that battle years ago, but they are full-force on Rock, even using it to describe some Jund and Junk decks.

At least Affinity runs a card that says "Affinity for Artifacts" in it, but what casual player is going to have any idea what "Rock" means?

 

[kirblar]

Coverage this weekend is annoying me. They are back on the "Robots" kick, after giving up that battle years ago, but they are full-force on Rock, even using it to describe some Jund and Junk decks.

At least Affinity runs a card that says "Affinity for Artifacts" in it, but what casual player is going to have any idea what "Rock" means?

"Rock" works because you need a word to describe the shell and the Junk/Jund/Golgari variants. B/G/x isn't a verbalizeable solution.

"Affinity" not being used seems to be entirely dependent on if the person doing coverage has a stick up their ass.

 

[bigkrev]

"Rock" works because you need a word to describe the shell and the Junk/Jund/Golgari variants. B/G/x isn't a verbalizeable solution.

"Affinity" not being used seems to be entirely dependent on if the person doing coverage has a stick up their ass.

I know, but "Jund" has a meaning, and "Rock" does not (Which is the same argument they make for Robots over Affinity). It's inconsistant and dumb

(FYI: "The Rock (and his Millions)" was a deck that used Phyrexian Plaguelord (The Rock) and Deranged Hermit (His millions)" back in the day. Over time, it's been co-opted to any B/G deck that grinds out card advantage)

 

[kirblar]

I know, but "Jund" has a meaning, and "Rock" does not (Which is the same argument they make for Robots over Affinity). It's inconsistant and dumb

(FYI: "The Rock (and his Millions)" was a deck that used Phyrexian Plaguelord (The Rock) and Deranged Hermit (His millions)" back in the day. Over time, it's been co-opted to any B/G deck that grinds out card advantage)

Jund also = R/B/G, making it awkward for the B/G/W and B/G variants.

 

[Firemind]

BGW is Doran Rock with or without Doran.
BG is regular Rock, since Golgari is a shitty name.
BRG is Jund.

Now we can call it Temur Twin and Jeskai Twin, Abzan Pod and Temur Pod...

 

[Angry Grimace]

Its going to still be BUG, RUG and Junk.

 

[The Technomancer]

bassimelwakil said: I'm confused: what are people complaining about when they're saying the wrong colour is being focused on in the Khan factions?

In Shards of Alara, the shards were centered on the color of which the other two colors were both allies. Following that pattern, many assumed wedges would do the same and focus on the color of which the other two colors were enemies. For example WBG would be centered in black as white and green are both enemies of black.

The information I would need to explain the design decision is not yet public, so I can just promise that once I’m allowed to explain, I will. And then you can all go, “Oh, that’s why.” : )

I'm really curious about this. Did they find that there was better design space in one ally and one enemy relationship instead of in two enemy?

 

[f0rk]

If I'm ordering from the UK, what's a good online store?

Cheapest singles will be in the facebook group ‎"UK & Ireland MTG Cards For Trade & Sale"

magiccardmarket.com is very good as well but you have to make sure you're paying for it right so you don't get had by international bank charges.

 

[kirblar]

I'm really curious about this. Did they find that there was better design space in one ally and one enemy relationship instead of in two enemy?

Something's up with the way the block pieces together - I think we get a drawdown at some point into fewer colors being focused on. (Probably in a 5 allys or 5 enemys way.)

 

[bigkrev]

Oh god, they are using the term "Whiterock" for WBG. Emergency release Khans tommorrow so we can use those names instead if they refuse to use Junk

 

[An-Det]

We have top 8 brackets, are the lists (or even which types of decks) available? I see an infect and affinity, and apparently a Junk deck, and have no idea how to navigate their new site.

Oh god, they are using the term "Whiterock" for WBG. Emergency release Khans tommorrow so we can use those names instead if they refuse to use Junk

Well damn, that's a new low.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Something's up with the way the block pieces together - I think we get a drawdown at some point into fewer colors being focused on. (Probably in a 5 allys or 5 enemys way.)

Yeah, I suspect that the middle set will be two-color focused (either allies only or enemies only) and the last set will be monocolor focused, showing how the five clans had developed from simple beginnings.

Come to think of it, if the next block is Return to Zendikar (it probably is), then it's a countdown, with 0 being colorless Eldrazis.

 

[bigkrev]

Also, whoever decided "Infect Mirror is the feature match!" needs to be publicly shamed.

 

[ultron87]

Running my free prerelease right now on MTGO while watching end of the GP. Deck is okay? I dunno. I usually think my decks are garbage in sealed, so... shrug?

Round Two is done and I'm 1-1. My opponents have played four turn six Souls so far. So that is exciting.

 

[kirblar]

That's pretty good, lol.

My free deck was a pile.

 

[Angry Grimace]

That's pretty good, lol.

My free deck was a pile.

I got nothing in mine either. I got a Soul of New Phyrexia and someone passed me a Sliver Hivelord foil in a prerelease draft yesterday which I sold this morning for 13 tix. I still lost that draft because I made the intelligent decision to enter the draft when I was fucked-in-half drunk and had no goddamn clue how to build the deck.

Also, that Leyline Legacy deck got a deck-tech!

http://www.starcitygames.com/events/coverage/deck_tech_leylines_with_chris_.html

 

[bigkrev]

Are the phantom points dissapearing? I want to save mine for a rainy day

 

[kirblar]

Are the phantom points dissapearing? I want to save mine for a rainy day

They are not.

 

[Cosmo Clock 21]

What exactly is there that points towards a Return to Zendikar, anyways?

 

[ultron87]

Pillar of Lighting an Ensoul Artifacted Thopter -> Opponent instantly conceding makes me really happy.

 

[Grakl]

It might never. He's the Vegeta to Bolas' Goku.

That would make me sad, hah.

 

["God's Beard!"]

Pillar of Lighting an Ensoul Artifacted Thopter -> Opponent instantly conceding makes me really happy.

People playing Ornithopter and Ensoul Artifact in limited make me really sad.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

So did anyone else watch Vintage Rotisserie Draft 7 on Saturday? For being broadcast out of some dude's basement, the quality was actually really, really good. Plus, the format itself was fascinating, and there were some fantastic matches of Magic played on stream.

The format is simple: 8 players draft 40-card decks from a pool containing literally every card in Magic's history. When it's your turn to pick, you can take anything that hasn't already been taken. Then play a round-robin tournament (which means you will absolutely play against everybody, so hate drafting can absolutely be a thing), and the top two after that play a best-of-five to find the winner.

The stream was about 12 hours long, but if you watch the replay and cut out the downtime, it's probably only about 9 hours of content. It's definitely worth getting all the way to the end. At some point they're supposed to be editing it up and putting in YouTube; that might be better to watch, but for now, it's only up on Twitch.

http://www.twitch.tv/shotgunlotus/b/551471062

 

[kirblar]

What exactly is there that points towards a Return to Zendikar, anyways?

My suddenly relevant Q to MaRo

About a year ago Mark started asking hardcore for feedback on Zendikar and RoE. He later started to have very specific opinions about certain mechanics or cards returning. Annihilator isn't happening. The Eldrazi will have new cards.

Also, in the recent PW guide, count the Zendikar references.

You can read the tea leaves by watching what questions he chooses to answer. He's been answering a LOT about Delve recently. It's totally the BUG mechanic.

 

[OnPoint]

My suddenly relevant Q to MaRo

About a year ago Mark started asking hardcore for feedback on Zendikar and RoE. He later started to have very specific opinions about certain mechanics or cards returning. Annihilator isn't happening. The Eldrazi will have new cards.

Also, in the recent PW guide, count the Zendikar references.

You can read the tea leaves by watching what questions he chooses to answer. He's been answering a LOT about Delve recently. It's totally the BUG mechanic.

You are probably right about the Eldrazi. But if they don't reprint Emrakul somehow his price is gonna explode.

 

[Hero]

My suddenly relevant Q to MaRo

About a year ago Mark started asking hardcore for feedback on Zendikar and RoE. He later started to have very specific opinions about certain mechanics or cards returning. Annihilator isn't happening. The Eldrazi will have new cards.

Also, in the recent PW guide, count the Zendikar references.

You can read the tea leaves by watching what questions he chooses to answer. He's been answering a LOT about Delve recently. It's totally the BUG mechanic.

Yup, what Kirblar says. MaRo says a lot about what he answers on his blog.

 

[kirblar]

You are probably right about the Eldrazi. But if they don't reprint Emrakul somehow his price is gonna explode.

MM2. It'll go through Scars.

 

[OnPoint]

MM2. It'll go through Scars.

So long as they don't limit availability quite so starkly, it'll help. We'll see...

 

[divisionbyzorro]

You can read the tea leaves by watching what questions he chooses to answer. He's been answering a LOT about Delve recently. It's totally the BUG mechanic.

Also, they rewrote the rules for Delve at the same time that they rewrote the rules for Convoke. That was a year ago at this point.

 

[Angry Grimace]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";122931829]People playing Ornithopter and Ensoul Artifact in limited make me really sad.[/QUOTE]

I did manage to love the dream and ensoul a darksteel citadel.

 

[bigkrev]

So did anyone else watch Vintage Rotisserie Draft 7 on Saturday? For being broadcast out of some dude's basement, the quality was actually really, really good. Plus, the format itself was fascinating, and there were some fantastic matches of Magic played on stream.

The format is simple: 8 players draft 40-card decks from a pool containing literally every card in Magic's history. When it's your turn to pick, you can take anything that hasn't already been taken. Then play a round-robin tournament (which means you will absolutely play against everybody, so hate drafting can absolutely be a thing), and the top two after that play a best-of-five to find the winner.

The stream was about 12 hours long, but if you watch the replay and cut out the downtime, it's probably only about 9 hours of content. It's definitely worth getting all the way to the end. At some point they're supposed to be editing it up and putting in YouTube; that might be better to watch, but for now, it's only up on Twitch.

http://www.twitch.tv/shotgunlotus/b/551471062

So I click a random spot in the video (around the 5 hour mark) to see the quality, and see a Wild Cantor on the battlefield

I approve.

 

["God's Beard!"]

I did manage to love the dream and ensoul a darksteel citadel.

-_-

 

[SigmasonicX]

My lightly modified version of the M15 intro deck with Ensoul Artifact has been doing really well in my casual games at work. Like they started maindecking Naturalize well.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

So I click a random spot in the video (around the 5 hour mark) to see the quality, and see a Wild Cantor on the battlefield

I approve.

He was trying to draft a Flash/Hulk combo; hence the Wild Cantor.

Pretty much all of the typical combos got drafted (Key/Vault, Splinter Twin, Storm, Flash/Hulk) and happened at one point in time or another.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Details from this Twitter account that I didn't see posted here (the below quote taken from MTG Salvation)

Abzan: Control, has a "Long game mechanic".
Jeskai: Tricks, mechanic will make opponent "second guess what's going on".
Sultai: Resource manipulation, mechanic is a way to "manipulate resources".
Mardu: Aggro, mechanic plays into their aggression.
Temur: Midrange/fatties, mechanic says "we wanna have the toughest creatures."

Basically confirms Sultai having delve.

 

[f0rk]

I suppose I'll do the roundup post for lazy people.

First of all, MaRo's sum-up:


Note that this means the "central color" of each clan isn't the shared enemy color.

The wedges are:

Abzan (The Abzan Houses)
WBG (black and enemies)
Dragon aspect: Endurance

Jeskai (The Jeskai Way)
URW (red and enemies)
Dragon aspect: Cunning

Sultai (The Sultai Brood)
BGU (green and enemies)
Dragon aspect: Ruthlessness

Mardu (The Mardu Horde)
RWB (white and enemies)
Dragon aspect: Speed

Temur (The Temur Frontier)
GUR (blue and enemies)
Dragon aspect: Savagery
Couldn't quickly find a good picture like the others, so have these two:

EDIT:

Quoted for new page cos I don't know the names.

Interesting the control wedge doesn't have blue.
Morph is clearly the UWR mechanic

 

[kirblar]

Morph is the 6th mechanic. Everyone gets it.

Delve is BUG.
Other 4 are unknown.

 

[f0rk]

Oh yeah didn't notice they all had it.

 

[Maledict]

That image is really confusing as it lists each wedge as enemy colour wedges, despite saying at the top that the central colour isn't the shared enemy colour. The first, Azban, is listed as 'black and enemies' but shouldn't it actually be listed as the white wedge for clarities sake and to show the design intent for the wedge?

The wedges are:

Azban - endurance, central colour -White, others Black & Green
Jeskai - cunning, Central colour - Blue, others White and Red
Sultai - ruthlessness, central colour - Black, others Blue and Green
Mardu - speed, Central colour - Red, others White and Black
Temur - savagery, Green, others Red and Blue

I think?

 

[ElyrionX]

Been playing my Esper Control deck for three weeks now and I'm having a great time going to a bunch of LGS for weekday nights Magic. I am enjoying the control playstyle a lot and hence, I am now seriously looking at constructing a Modern UWR deck. Should I do it or not?

The deck is expensive as hell so I was just wondering whether there's any smart way to go about this? I was thinking of just picking up a playset of staples such as Snapcaster, Cryptic Command and Celestial Colonnade that are unlikely to be reprinted and then slowly building up from there once Khans releases. How likely is it that the fetchlands will be reprinted in Khans? And are cards such as Snapcaster and Cryptic Command in danger of being banned in the format?

 

[The Technomancer]

Jeskai: Tricks, mechanic will make opponent "second guess what's going on".

Interesting. If they weren't already confirmed to have a new mechanic I'd think they were getting morph

 

[acheron_xl]

2x Soul of Innistrad
Ob Nixilis
Indulgent Tormentor

If I fuck this sealed up, I'm going to be sad.

 

[blindrocket]

Been playing my Esper Control deck for three weeks now and I'm having a great time going to a bunch of LGS for weekday nights Magic. I am enjoying the control playstyle a lot and hence, I am now seriously looking at constructing a Modern UWR deck. Should I do it or not?

The deck is expensive as hell so I was just wondering whether there's any smart way to go about this? I was thinking of just picking up a playset of staples such as Snapcaster, Cryptic Command and Celestial Colonnade that are unlikely to be reprinted and then slowly building up from there once Khans releases. How likely is it that the fetchlands will be reprinted in Khans? And are cards such as Snapcaster and Cryptic Command in danger of being banned in the format?

UWR is what I play and it is a lot of fun.

 

[SigmasonicX]

As someone who hasn't actually played with morph before, is there any obligation on the player's part to make it clear in what order to morph cards came in? That is to say, to make it clear that "this is the card that came in two turns ago, this is the one I brought in just now". Or is the player free to shuffle the morph cards around?

 

[ultron87]

Random M15 rules thing I probably would've messed up in paper: if your Netcaster Spider blocks a flier and then gets Turn to Frogged it'll still be blocking as a 2/1 instead of as a 0/1. Hooray for layers.

 

[kirblar]

As someone who hasn't actually played with morph before, is there any obligation on the player's part to make it clear in what order to morph cards came in? That is to say, to make it clear that "this is the card that came in two turns ago, this is the one I brought in just now". Or is the player free to shuffle the morph cards around?

Yes, you have to keep them distinct.

 

[ElyrionX]

UWR is what I play and it is a lot of fun.

I've been reading a ton into it and it feels like a very combo-heavy format to me. Does UWR answer the combo-heavy decks like Splinter Twin adequately?

 

[SigmasonicX]

Random M15 rules thing I probably would've messed up in paper: if your Netcaster Spider blocks a flier and then gets Turn to Frogged it'll still be blocking as a 2/1 instead of as a 0/1. Hooray for layers.

Well, 3/1, since Turn to Frog makes it a 1/1. And I'm pretty sure it's for this reason that they introduced the "base power and toughness" terminology.

Also, if we somehow get to another OT by the time Khans comes out, I request that the title be "Khans is morphenomenal!"

 

[ultron87]

Right. Had Turn//Burn on the mind.

Yeah, I think that new template is pretty smart. I think the tricky thing in this part is that the power boost comes from the creature itself so on an intuitive level you might just assume that goes away as well when it changes. It is much more obvious with a Titanic Growth or Aura affecting the P/T.

 

[Firemind]

Well, 3/1, since Turn to Frog makes it a 1/1. And I'm pretty sure it's for this reason that they introduced the "base power and toughness" terminology.

Also, if we somehow get to another OT by the time Khans comes out, I request that the title be "Khans is morphenomenal!"

Yeah, I almost punted a game because I thought it worked like Turn to Frog, so I could have Firebreathed my dragon token and done lethal.

Now I'm not sure if I want Polymorpher's Jest in my deck. At first I thought it'd be a neat combo with Izzet Staticaster, but base power/toughness is a bit worse than I thought. Then again, it still kills a horde of pack rats and there aren't many decks that can boost toughness of creatures.